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Page 10.

During the night, the horror of his situation sank in as Alex lay huddled and shivering in his earthy hole.

He had sunk to the lowest level imaginable—by comparison, his stay in the birthing caves had been paradise. Here he had nothing but the stiff, cold hide he wore, which chafed his skin raw and at times actually made him colder. He was about to die from loss of body heat.

His misery enveloped him in layers. He was starving and his stomach was in constant pain as its acids began digesting the stomach itself. More immediately, he was about to die from loss of body heat. He shivered through the night, convinced that he was losing so much body heat that he would not awaken in the morning. As the ambient temperature dropped toward the dew point, moisture formed in the leaves around him. His protective shield of radiated body heat shrank perilously close to the skin. Soon his feet and ankles were stiff and numb.

All the while, he kept getting flashes of his long-ago Alex Kirk memory, in some impossibly wonderful paradise in upstate New York, where the lovely Maryan Shurey rode by on a horse and smiled at him while he sat on his porch drinking lemonade and waving. Had such a world ever existed? There was not a shred of evidence anywhere today, but the thought of finding his way back to that world offered the only glimmer of hope in this lost existence into which he had fallen.

He discovered he had company in his burrow. Lines of ants kept crossing his torso, and he kept crushing them when he felt their hundreds of tiny legs tickling and burning.

Something slithered past, hunting, and stopped. A forked tongue probing sent airwaves around him as the snake dispassionately examined what he was. If it were poisonous, he prayed that it would take him quickly. But it slithered on, perhaps seeking something smaller that it could wrap its mouth around and swallow down the corridor of its body.

Something large emerged to his right and plopped onto his face. Instinctively he reached up—and found a beetle almost as big as the palm of his hand. For a second its hard, armored feet started to hook into his skin. He screamed and tore it off his face in rage and fear and anguish as he crushed it in his palm. Instinctively, he pressed the shattered, still twitching carapace to his mouth and sucked out the eggy-tasting slime inside. He threw the empty shell away into the night.

Strangely, that calmed him. He could feel the lump of matter moving down his esophagus and into his stomach, which calmed down as it began to digest. He chewed on dry grass—hay, he thought, like cows eat—in the hope of adding some bulk. He crawled through the brush and licked dew off large curling leaves on the ground around his lair.

Then he burrowed deep and fell asleep.

It sounded as if it came from ten feet away, and made his hair stand on end. Was this his last moment alive?

There, across the canyon, stood a mother ripper and two cubs. She projected those loud roars with such power that he thought he could already feel her licking his crumpled corpse before those 4-inch incisors tore him apart.

He hid from them, terrified. Meanwhile, the warm yellow sun burned down on his limbs, and he soon exercised the stiffness out of them.

Then came his defining moment.

Angered at his helplessness and the animals’ predatory selfishness, he decided to begin educating the rippers. He was not just going to die—he was going to fight back. He was going to take charge of his world or die trying! Let them feel some respect for him. He gathered a handful of rocks—round ones that would not curve in the air during flight—the size of large marbles. He could throw them easily, with the coordination and skills he had inherited from Alex Kirk. He could aim them, for Alex had been a good athlete, especially in college at Beacham University.

The first shot missed, but startled the ripper, who jerked her head up and took a half step back. Then she glared at him as if outraged at his daring. The next one clipped one of her cubs, which ran off wailing. She watched it go and then stood with her side to him, growling at him. He could see the fine lines of her ribs under that shiny, well-fed brown fur. He could see her sides compressing and decompressing with every breath she took. The next shot clipped her in the ribs, and she sidled away. She thrashed a bit, alternately licking her side and roaring and spitting defiance at him. He let go another shot, which went wide. His arm was getting tired. When he bent to pick up another rock, she abruptly rose, nudged the second cub, and off they went. Had she learned not to come roaring at Alex? Maybe she would come silently next time. At least she had that much respect for him now, that she would sneak up rather than bully him with roaring.

He must provide for several things: he must be warm and dry. He must have food and water. He must make a complete exploration of his little niche here atop the valley.

It took just a little while to walk one exploratory circuit around the edge. The cliff dropped off sharply on all sides, and he began to feel hopeful that he was safe here. Every so often he would hear a snort or a roar, or a crashing among bushes very close, and that told him his enemies were relentlessly working to catch him, as if it were some birthright of theirs—not entirely incorrect, as he was later to learn. They sounded hungry and annoyed by now. Sometimes he would see their dark forms gliding through the shadows below. Once he looked down and, unexpectedly, saw one looking up at him, its paws as high up against the crumbling sandstone as it could reach when standing fully erect on its hind legs. He was too shocked to react. It looked up at him expectantly, wondering if he would come down to it. He was so surprised he nearly fell. He threw a melon-size boulder down, but it twisted out of the way with plenty of time and then bounded away. He missed with two other small boulders.